Books

Escaping North Korea was the easy part. In her memoir, The Girl With Seven Names, Hyeonseo Lee, as she is called today, takes us on her gripping journey from the Ryanggang Province of North Korea where dustless portraits of the Great Leader and Dear Leader hang in every home to life as a defector in China and beyond. Due to a high social ranking and a mother skilled in bribery, Lee has a more privileged upbringing than most in North Korea. However, the extra food and occasional luxuries cannot shield her from the oppression that accompanies living under the rule of Kim Il Sung and …

The sense of justice and righteousness that Sheriff Quinn Colson has brought to his tenure in Mississippi’s Tibbehah County is drawing to a close in Ace Atkins’ gripping new novel, The Redeemers. But the fifth installment in this series is more than a look at Quinn’s last days as sheriff, having lost the …

What would it feel like to be an 8-year-old boy suddenly separated from your family? The scariness of the situation is clear and immediate in Chickadee, which is set in 1866 in the territory that is now Minnesota. The story brings readers into the thoughts of a Native American boy named Chickadee; his …

A theater up the street asks its employees to include the title of a favorite movie on their nametags. The choices of these teenagers and twenty-somethings can be anything from Fast and Furious 5 or The Hunger Games …

‘ P iranha, the latest in the Oregon Files series of novels by Clive Cussler and Boyd Morrison, and proves to be the best yet. Juan Cabrillo and his team are experts in covert missions, and their ship, …

Suggestions from Katharine Nevins of MainStreet BookEnds in Warner will keep you reading great books all summer long. The Truth According to Us By Annie Barrows – $28 From the co-author of the perfect book The Guernsey Literary …

The former district attorney from New York who tried to convict millionaire murder suspect Robert Durst is writing a book. Jeanine Pirro’s He Killed Them All will be published Nov. 3, Gallery Books announced Tuesday. According to Gallery, a Simon & Schuster imprint, the former Westchester County D.A. …

Don Winslow is obsessed, and he knows it. “People refer to this as the ‘Mexican drug problem’ and it’s not the Mexican drug problem. It’s the American drug problem. It’s the European drug problem,” the crime novelist said …

If summer is a time when we allow ourselves to simply enjoy our entertainments, there’s no timely cocktail I’d rather recommend than China Rich Girlfriend, the sequel to Kevin Kwan’s lively Crazy Rich Asians. The story of Rachel …

Put on a pot of tea and curl up with The Love Object, the new collection of Edna O’Brien stories. If you’re lucky, it’ll be cold, damp and misty outside. Many of the 31 stories published between 1968 …

In 2012 the city of Austin erected an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Willie Nelson in the heart of the business district. Schoolchildren, churchgoers, tourists, slackers, conventioneers, tech geeks – everybody, it seems – now congregate around this ponytailed …

From the riots in Ferguson to the movie about Selma, race has been at the forefront of the national conversation recently. On the news and at our dinner tables, the country is discussing how far we still have …

Set against alternating backdrops of flourishing Kentucky lavender fields and a struggling tobacco farm, Lori Roy’s Let Me Die in His Footsteps traces the story of Annie Holleran, how she came to be, and how her entire town …